ADELAIDE app developers get it right overnight

“The cost to develop an app anywhere in the world is about the same so the real difference is in terms of the time it takes and the quality of the outcome. ”

Marty Gauvin

Virtual Ark CEO

THE London designers of an emerging music app have turned to South Australia to build their product ahead of traditional app powerhouses such as India and Eastern Europe.

BlueJay Music has chosen to develop its app in Adelaide because of cultural similarities that have led to greater reliability and a time zone that allows for work around the clock.

Bluejay is the brainchild of father and son duo Peter and Sam Shore but developed by Virtual Ark in the South Australian capital.

The Virtual Ark team is driven by IT specialist Marty Gauvin who previously worked with Peter at cloud-hosting firm Hostworks.

BlueJay’s development began in India but was moved to Adelaide after progress halted.

Gauvin said Adelaide was ideally placed to become a leader in outsourced app development.

He said the quality of resources and its ability to work on products while areas of the world like Europe and the Americas were sleeping made it the most effective option.

“The cost to develop an app anywhere in the world is about the same so the real difference is in terms of the time it takes and the quality of the outcome,” the Virtual Ark CEO said.

“Low cost countries like China, India, Russia or Vietnam don’t have the advantage that they seem to because they tend to have an abundance of one skill specialists but we have cross-skilled people.”

Gauvin said Adelaide was also “measurably cheaper than other Australian cities” and it was ready to service the “tens of thousands of projects” from the other side of the world.

BlueJay Music is a new music app that harnesses the power of social media to set it apart from big players such as Spotify and Pandora.

It gives people the opportunity to stream a playlist of their favourite songs from their smartphone to anyone in the world in real time.

What makes the app stand out is the addition of a group messaging system where curator and listener can interact with each other while listening to the same playlist.

Bluejay CEO Sam Shore said it was important to have a system that could cater around the clock for inevitable problems.

“I think in the modern development environment it’s not difficult to write software in one place, have it operate from infrastructure in another, and then analyse the data that you capture – whether it’s about music, or retail sales, or fitness trackers, or anything really,” he said.

“It’s more about the quality and value of what you’re getting than the place you’re getting it from.”

BlueJay currently relies on song files taken directly from individual mobile devices but it is in the process of expanding its sources to include Spotify and Apple Music libraries.

It also includes the ability for artists who own the rights to their own music to showcase their songs.

“We like Spotify and Pandora – and most of the other streaming apps out there – but they are a fundamentally different model to us,” Shore said.

“We’ve added a new dimension – you are actually listening to music in real time with other people, and interacting with them while doing it.”

BlueJay Music is available for the latest versions of iOS and Android in the United Kingdom and its technology is in the process of being patented.

It is also working to secure equivalent licences in other jurisdictions, including the United States, Australia and Europe.

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